ICE Expands Surveillance Tools, Raising Privacy and Legal Questions
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is deploying a new suite of surveillance tools to identify and monitor people in public spaces. These include mobile facial recognition apps, iris scanners, location-intelligence software, and contracts tied to spyware capabilities. The sudden scale and variety of technologies have renewed debates about privacy, civil liberties, and the proper limits of federal enforcement.
Officials are using apps that let agents point a cell phone at someone’s face to attempt identification and to determine immigration status in the field. There are also systems that can scan irises and licensed software that claims to provide access to vast amounts of location-based data. A previously paused contract tied to a company that produces cellphone-hacking spyware has reportedly been revived.
The agency is also expanding social media monitoring and acquiring AI-driven tools meant to parse public and private platforms for relevant intelligence. Reports say ICE is considering around-the-clock contractor teams to comb databases and platforms to create dossiers on users. That combination of image, location and social-data collection stretches the traditional boundaries of immigration enforcement.
The current administration is pursuing aggressive deportation goals and views these technologies as operational tools to locate noncitizens subject to removal. Some members of Congress have pressed the agency for answers about legal authority and oversight but say many questions remain unanswered. A group of senators has asked ICE to stop using a mobile facial recognition app while they seek more information.
“Americans have a right to walk through public spaces without being surveilled,” Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Mass. told NPR. Privacy and civil liberties groups warn the technologies pose a grave threat and that existing oversight and regulatory frameworks are insufficient. They argue unprecedented technical reach into daily life undermines constitutional protections.
“Immigration powers are being used to justify mass surveillance of everybody,” said Emily Tucker, the executive director of the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law. “The purpose of this is to build up a massive surveillance apparatus that can be used for whatever kind of policing the people in power decide that they want to undertake,” she said. Those are strong words from a scholar tracking the intersection of civil liberties and government technology.
A widely circulated video from Aurora, Ill., shows Border Patrol agents confronting two young people near a high school and asking for citizenship and ID. At one point an officer is heard asking, “Can you do facial?” and another officer points a phone at a young person as if taking a photo. The clip raised questions about how and when these tools are used on minors and citizens who lack identification.
ICE has a mobile facial recognition app known as Mobile Fortify that searches Customs and Border Protection databases, including photos taken when people enter and exit the U.S., and can return information like a subject’s name, birth date, alien number, possible citizenship status and “Possible Overstay Status.” The agency says the app returns limited biographic data for matches from a specified target list called the Fortify the Border Hotlist, while non-matches “will not return any additional information.”
Documents indicate individuals cannot decline to be photographed and that photos may be stored for 15 years even if there is no match. Separately, a different app called Mobile Identify is reportedly available to deputized state and local law enforcement. Civil libertarians warn those policies and practices can chill public life and assembly.
“The whole idea of anonymity in public, it’s really gone when the administration or the government can immediately identify who you are,” David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, said. He added that instant identification could deter people from attending protests or other public gatherings. Those concerns touch on First Amendment and Fourth Amendment implications.
A bipartisan legal conversation has already started, with senators requesting detailed information on legal bases, development histories, database inclusions, and use policies covering citizens, protesters and minors. ICE did not provide the requested specifics in every case, prompting renewed demands for transparency. Lawmakers want to know what safeguards, if any, are in place.
ICE issued a statement saying, “Nothing new here. For years law enforcement across the nation has leveraged technological innovation to fight crime. ICE is no different. Employing various forms of technology in support of investigations and law enforcement activities aids in the arrest of criminal gang members, child sex offenders, murderers, drug dealers, identity thieves and more, all while respecting civil liberties and privacy interests.”
DHS also noted, “While the Department does not discuss specific vendors or operational tools, any technology used by DHS Components must comply with the requirements and oversight framework.” Critics reply that compliance claims require stronger public safeguards and independent oversight to be meaningful.
Separately, the administration has pursued contracts with firms tied to advanced spyware tools that can infect phones via a message and grant extensive remote access. “It has essentially complete access to your phone,” said Jeramie Scott, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. That form of access bypasses ordinary legal protections and raises serious Fourth Amendment questions.
DHS has expanded biometric collection over successive administrations, and research has found ICE could locate three out of four U.S. adults through utility records and had scanned a third of adult Americans’ driver’s license photos. “Even if there weren’t robust laws and regulations for rights protection, there were some norms that were seen as not really transgressible basically by all the presidential administrations up until that point,” Tucker said of earlier practices.
The broad adoption of facial recognition, location tracking, biometric collection and intrusive spyware into immigration enforcement presents complex trade-offs between public safety and individual rights. Policymakers, courts, and the public will be forced to decide how far federal enforcement should be allowed to reach into ordinary life while operating under the Constitution.